


Being Myself

by Johniarty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Bi-Gender Character(s), Developing Relationship, Gen, Other, Unilock, johniarty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1431814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johniarty/pseuds/Johniarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson knows exactly who they are. John some days, Joan on others, they are proud to be themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Myself

**Author's Note:**

> This was a piece for my creative writing class, a 1500 word short story based around a character of my choosing. I really, really hope this isn't seen as disrespectful to the Genderqueer community. I'm a trans man, and I reflected my experiences with coming out when writing for John/Joan.

 

 

            There’s a boy in my Classic Mythology class with eyes like hot bourbon. I think he’s Irish; his words have a soft lilt that adds honey to his speech, and some days I think about licking language from his mouth. I caught him staring the other day, staring _through_ me, and I wondered if he thought I was a freak. That’s what everyone says. _Freak. Disgusting. Fag._ The truth is I’m none of these things. I’m myself. John on most days, Joan on others, I am both and both exist within me.

**\---**

            My family doesn’t understand. When Harriet came out as a lesbian, our father kicked her from the house and screamed obscenities into the dark cobalt sky. She climbed into her car, her green eyes brimming with unshed tears, and pealed out of the driveway as our father slammed the door shut on her retreating vehicle. If he can’t handle her sexuality, how can he be asked to understand my identity? It’s the core of who I am. I am not a binary system, I am a galaxy and I am more than stark black and white. I am bi-gendered, weaving between the dichotomies of Male and Female. How could he possibly comprehend me?

\---

            The first time he caught me with a skirt, I told him it was my girlfriend’s and that she’d left in my room. Despite the fact I _didn’t_ have a girlfriend, or anyone over to visit that week, he laughed and clapped me on the back.

  “That’s my boy!” my father said, grinning wide. _Sometimes,_ I wanted to say. _Sometimes I **am** your boy, and sometimes I’m your girl, like Harriet, _but I kept my lips sealed and smiled back. He didn’t need to know that my first kiss was under the bleachers with Mike Stamford, while I tucked my shaggy blonde hair behind my ear and looked up at him through black-lined eyelashes. Mike told me I was beautiful. He called me Joan—the name I gave willingly, with no hesitation—and asked me out again. My father didn’t need to know that I’d accepted, or that Mike had moved away to go to medical school and I’d sobbed myself to sleep when I found out. He didn’t need to know that Mike was the closest thing I’d ever had to a boyfriend. My father didn’t need to know a damned thing.

**\---**

            James. That’s his name, James. He sat beside me Monday and flashed me a dimpled smile that set my blood on fire. It lit his whole face like a sunrise. The signature smolder I found myself dreaming of was replaced with that, the beautiful grin, and it transformed him into a different person before my eyes.

  “What’s your name?”

I tugged at the hem of my skirt and tried to think of a clear answer.

  “Today? Joan,” I whispered, ducking my eyes.

  “Does it change often?”

  “No, but… Sometimes I prefer John.” How? How had I gotten so lucky? This gorgeous boy, sitting next to me, asking my names as if it were the most normal thing in the world… I waited for the other shoe to drop. I waited for him to ask why, or demand what the difference was, but no questions followed. He nodded to me and offered his hand.

  “James, but I prefer Jim. Pleasure to meet you, Joan.”

I shook his hand with a smile of my own. It was strangely formal, but it worked. It worked for us.

  “Would you like to grab a bite when the lecture’s out?”

I wanted nothing more.

**\---**

            Jim stretched back on the grass and took a drag of his cigarette. The smoke curled and reached toward the gray clouds above him, pregnant with the promise of April storms. I wanted to ask him if he was worried about green stains on his stark white tee shirt, or being covered in mud when the rain finally broke down around us, but I ate my fries in silence and watched the way his cheeks hollowed around the filter.  The sight was singularly obscene, and I loved it.

  “What do you prefer?”

It was a question no one ever asked. No one took a look at me, in my loose jeans or my summer dresses, and asked _what do they want to be called?_ Consideration for _my_ feelings seemed to be the last thing on anyone’s mind. I didn’t know how to handle the situation. Words rose in my throat and evaporated on my tongue, wispy and insubstantial as it tried to force them past my lips. What _did_ I prefer, pronoun-wise? What if he didn’t _mean_ pronouns? I’d told him my name, hadn’t I?

  “It… depends,” I said cautiously. “It depends on how I feel. ‘They’ is always good, used as a singular, but, um… Well, today, ‘she’ is good. On another day, ‘he’ works. Just like- just like ‘Joan’ and ‘John’, it’s situational.” God, what if he thought I was high maintenance? What if he decided not to bother with me?

  “So it depends on how you feel that day?”

  “Essentially, yeah. I know, it’s weird—“

  “It’s not weird, Joan. It’s you. It’s who you are. Never apologize for that. Not to me, not to anyone.” Jim’s voice carried an edge, a rage boiling beneath the surface. Not at me, or my identity, but aimed at the world around us. That razor-edged voice sliced open the clouds, sending rain showering upon us. In an instant the anger was gone, replaced with mirth as he leaped up and wrapped his arms around me. His crisp shirt clung to his body as he lifted me and carried me back to the building, laughing every wet step of the way. I circled my arms around his neck and giggled as we ducked through the doors.

  “My hero,” I cooed, wringing the water from my jacket.

**\---**

            “Get out!”

I clutched my clothes to my chest and backed toward the door of my bedroom. My father’s face was crimson in his rage. He stank of vodka of and sweat as he grabbed my lamp and flung it against the wall.

  “I raised you to be a fucking man!” he bellowed. His voice was thunderous. It shook the house and rattled the paper-thin windows in their ancient frames. My mother stood in the hall, wringing her pruned hands, a dishrag tucked into her apron. Her eyes were cast to the floor. It had always been easier for her to pretend she was somewhere else, married to someone else, when her husband started to scream.

  “Where will I go?!”

  “Go stay with that faggot boyfriend of yours! Get a dorm on campus! Do whatever you have to, but get the hell out of my house! I didn’t work my ass off at two jobs to _provide_ for you and your sister for you two to turn around and bite my ass like this!”

  “How are we ‘biting your ass’?! We’re _fine_! There’s nothing _wrong_ with us!”

  “Out. _Now._ You, Harry, you’re both dead to me. You’re not my son, she’s not my daughter, we _have_ no children! Isn’t that right, Mary?”

My mother muttered something unintelligible, and he nodded once in her direction, acknowledging her noises as sounds of agreement.

  “Get your shit and go, John. And don’t fucking come back.” I couldn’t tell him I was Joan today.

**\---**

            “I could kill him.”

Jim ran one gentle hand through my hair, letting the dishwater strands slip between his fingers. I rested against his chest with a fist knotted in the leather of his jacket. We sat on his porch; in a wooden swing weathered with age, rocking as I told him what had happened that night.

  “No, you’d get caught.”

  “You don’t know that.”

For the first time since our lunch date, I found myself laughing. Jim smiled down at me, still carding through my hair. When I raised my eyes to his, the cerulean of the sea meeting the rich sepia of the soil, sparks that had been building for weeks burst into flames between us. He cupped my jaw and pressed his lips against mine in a slow, gentle kiss that seared my mouth and soul. He tasted of tobacco and apples, of whiskey and smoke. That weird amalgamation of sour and sweet, the nectar I’d always longed to taste from his lips, lingered on my tongue after we parted.

  “Joan,” he whispered, bumping his forehead against mine.

  “You know… I’m feeling a bit more John right now.”

  “Alright, Johnny. It’s good you got out of there. I don’t have much, but… you’ll at least have a safe place to stay.”

I blinked away the tears that blurred my vision. I’d finally found somewhere I could be myself, without fear. I found a friend. For the first time in, well, forever, I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. I was free.


End file.
